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Caesars Entertainment Operating Corp. received a bankruptcy court’s approval in January to end a chapter 11 case that began in January 2015. But the proceedings continue to make payments to law firms Kirkland & Ellis, Jones Day and Proskauer Rose, the American Lawyer reported yesterday. Bankruptcy Judge A. Benjamin Goldgar in Chicago approved another round of payouts last week in a case that has shaved $10 billion in debt from the gaming giant’s balance sheet. The payments, for work dating from October through the closing of the bankruptcy on Jan. 17, will push Kirkland’s payout to more than $70 million for representing Caesars. Kirkland will receive $7.1 million for three-and-a-half months’ work on behalf of the debtor. Proskauer, which represented a group of unsecured creditors in the case, will be paid about $2.2 million for its work during that timeframe, bringing its total to around $29 million. And Jones Day, which went to bat for a group of second-lien junior bondholders, will make about $1.5 million in the sixth payout of legal fees since the case began more than two years ago, bringing the Cleveland-founded firm’s total payout to just north of $25 million, according to bankruptcy court filings. For those three firms, there is likely to be at least one more payment authorized by the court, but the legal fees have largely tapered off from earlier in Caesars’ chapter 11 proceedings.

The U.S. Justice Department’s $4 billion fund for victims of Bernard Madoff’s epic Ponzi scheme is getting closer to making its first payout, more than four years after it was set up, Bloomberg News reported on Friday. The administrator of the Madoff Victim Fund, Richard Breeden, said in an update on his website that the Justice Department in early June had approved more than 35,000 petitions claiming total losses of more than $6.5 billion. The first round of checks should go out sometime this year, he said. “Approved petitioners should expect to receive notification of these decisions in the coming weeks,” he said.